You Hold
by inalasahl
Summary: No one's alone who's part of a crew.


**Acknowledgements:** Profuse thanks and major props to kelly girl for the beta.

* * *

Anyone who hadn't known Zoe for years would think she was fine. There's nothing to give her away. She works the same as always, smiles the same as always and if she doesn't laugh as much as always, that's probably because there's fewer jokes being made these days. 

Mal has known Zoe for years. Miranda has drawn them all closer together. No one talks of leaving these days, not even Inara. She and Mal kissed once before looking at each other rather chagrined. Heat is not always the same as passion. He ran his fingers through the hair that stuck out over his forehead, and laughed. "Well, don't that beat all. We shoulda done that some time back, I guess." Inara didn't truly seem to mind somehow, and she stayed. They all did.

Nothing ever goes smooth. Smuggling hand-carved something or others made from a material the Alliance doesn't want transported from planet to planet solely to line the pockets of those with a vested interest in driving demand up should be easy pickings. It is, right up until the moment when Jayne shimmies right instead of left and a box tips over spilling out it's contents all over the floor of the cargo bay. They're mobiles, the kind that go over a baby's bunk. Everything around the edges grays out as time slows down, Mal's attention entirely arrested by the way Zoe falls to her knees with a choked gasp, one hand reaching out to caress the smooth surface of a duckling. Time comes to with a snap when as she purses her lips and straightens her shoulders. Her eyes are hard as she scoops the fallen mobiles back into the box, mechanically. Himself, Mal feels frenzied. He falls to his knees beside her, picking them up frantically, wanting them gone, out-of-sight. Zoe'll be fine, he tells himself. Everybody has bad moments.

But she skips dinner that night, in favor of going early to her bunk.

Mal's used to insomnia, used to walking the ship at night. The quiet reassures him. It's not unusual for him to have company either. They all have restless nights, time to time. Even when they don't, it's not so odd for him to come upon River in the cockpit watching the stars, Kaylee fiddling in the engine room or Simon in the medlab poring over the latest cortex article on brain trauma. Zoe walks the ship with him more nights than not these days, and they chat easily about jobs and the minor day-to-day skirmishes occasioned by seven people living in close quarters. But that night, he finds her in the lounge, sipping slowly and determinedly from a cup of coffee. Mal's see it before, the kind of ritual ordinary activities take on when a person's trying to forestall going moon-brained. He never expected to see it from Zoe, though, and it scares him more than screaming and crying would have.

"Zoe," he says, announcing his presence before he sits down across from her, hands over his knees as he leans toward her.

"Sir," she replies before taking another careful sip, holding his gaze for what seems to be a prescribed amount of time. She's fine all right, but brittle somehow also.

A herd-bound horse has a right to get tetchy when someone goes missing. There's a lot Mal wants to say now that things have quieted down a bit, now that they're less on the run than they have been, though no less skirting the law. He wants to say that it's okay that Zoe needs time. Wants to say something about the end of the war and Zoe and how he felt and how he'd like to return the favor if he can. But he doesn't have the words for that. "River's been complaining about the controls sticking. Kaylee says the yoke needs a new something or other, but I can't help but think Wash could have worked around it."

Zoe puts down her coffee cup. "The bed's too big," she replies.

"You want to share?" Mal says.

Boots and suspenders off, pants on. No touching, just the dark and the sound of someone else breathing, and it's not all that different than it once was back when they'd sleep under the stars, rolled together for warmth, the occasional boom in the distance it's own sort of lullaby.

* * *

Mal and Zoe share a bunk regular after that, and they both sleep easier. Mal feels almost twitchy waiting on the crew to find out, to have an opinion on him taking a dead man's place. But as it happens nobody says a word, not even Jayne, though Mal can tell from the leer on his face that he's holding in a few choice cracks, probably nothing more serious than the innuendo he made after Kaylee and Simon got together. 

There isn't anything sexual between them anyway, until the night there is. It was a typical day really, passing in a hail of bullets. Mal's been clipped on his arm, a nearly bloodless flesh wound that stings like fire regardless.

They're both scraped all to heck from the tumble down the shale-covered hillside.

Mal turns off the timer on the shower (there are benefits to being captain), and they both step in. It's nothing more than either of them have done many times over. Bathing during war time is catch as catch can. Modesty's nothing more than a hindrance. Distance or maybe something else make this time different, though, because Mal can hardly breathe as Zoe carefully washes rocks and mud from each tiny pinprick wound on his back that he can't reach. When she kisses him, he forgets to breathe at all.

If the two of them get drunk after instead of before, nobody needs to know.

Anyway, he's got a lot on his mind so there's no reason he should blame himself that it takes him six months to notice the Alliance has got some kind of bead on them. Contacts disappear, spooked. Jobs dry up. There are warnings from Jayne's family, Kaylee's and the Heart of Gold about strangers hanging around, asking questions.

Their markers don't run the right way mostly. In the end, it's a combination of Simon and Inara's work that gets them the intel. "I'll be damned," is all Mal says. He doesn't even bother to ask Zoe before he removes all traces of his presence from her bunk. He already knows what she'll say.

The rescue mission goes without a hitch, and suddenly he's there before them on Serenity, alive and whole save for the shadows in his face. None of them quite know what to do or say. Mal feels sick, guilt in every shift of his weight from foot to foot. Wash just leans against a bulkhead, nice and easy. He smiles. "Wo de tìan, what happened while I was gone? You folks look like you've seen a ghost." It's a terrible joke, lame and stupid, but it works, because they're all laughing. Kaylee comes forward for a hug. Jayne punches Wash in the arm, familiar-like. Zoe — Zoe's sobbing like Mal's never seen her before, choking, gasping and shaking. Mal can't help it — he takes a step forward, but Wash gets there first, wrapping Zoe up in a tight bear hug, then kissing every wet track of her face. Mal suddenly remembers something very urgent he needs to do elsewhere.

Simon gets time for an examination eventually. Mal makes sure to hear the results. "They can bring entire planets to life," Simon says. "They can make psychics. It is not so surprising they would figure out a way to do this — so long as they got there before decomp started."

"The info they got from him," Mal asks, shoving down images of what he's been doing the last few months while Wash was in Alliance hands, "Torture?"

He's startled when Simon's foot kicks out, slamming against the table. "Sophisticated," he says like a curse. "That's the word my contact used." His mouth twists into a harsh line. "Alliance interrogation techniques are so sophisticated these days that they can make you talk without leaving a mark." His hands flail. "I don't know, I don't know what they did — Wash wouldn't say, but it was bad. Almost as bad as what those liúmáng did to River." Well. Mal had asked, after all.

* * *

Wash hasn't been back a week before he corners Mal one night. For two seconds, Mal will forget, because he does for two seconds every gorram day. When Wash walks up rubbing his head, the sarcastic comment falls out of his mouth before he remembers to stop it. "That shirt of yours would give anybody a headache, but I ain't paying you to sit around bellyaching." 

Wash lets it past, clearly distracted, and Mal remembers. He'd been expecting it. Mal's already decided to let Wash get the first punch in. It's written all over his face that he knows about Mal and Zoe. Wash doesn't hit him, though afterward Mal's as gobsmacked as if he had.

"I spent six months alone, thinking I was never going to see Zoe again," Wash says. "Never thought you folks would realize I was alive. Wasn't sure if you did, that you'd want me back after all I told them." Mal tucks his hands real careful into his belt, because there's a part of him that doesn't want Wash back, and it gets bigger every time he goes back to his bunk at night, alone.

"Yeah," he says, bracing himself for the punch he knows is coming.

"Wouldn't wish that on anyone."

"Yeah."

"I guess Zoe felt the same way maybe, glad she wasn't alone."

Oh, yeah, Mal thinks, that punch is coming real soon. "Sure."

"Dying has a way of clarifying things. I thought, I thought I'd lost Zoe forever. Being alone like that?"

"Mmmhmmm."

"Wouldn't even wish it on you."

Mal looks at Wash then, really looks at him, because there's something in his voice that Mal don't get. "Well, that's ..."

"Mal," Wash says. "I can't take her from you."

Mal knows that's all wrong, because Wash can, he already has, Zoe wouldn't ever. He says it out loud maybe, because Wash cuts him off.

"Isn't enough love in this verse that we can afford to go around wasting it. None of us have so much time." Mal flinches as Wash reaches out, but his hand only rests gently on Mal's shoulder. "We're crew, right? None of us should have to be alone. She loves us both, and I'm not going to take that from her — from either of you." That's when Wash leans in and presses his lips very carefully to Mal's slack unresisting ones. Tianna, Mal thinks, even as he fights a terrifying bloom of interest in his lower half, Simon missed something big in his examination.

When Wash steps back his eyes are kind. "Zoe and I — we've talked about it. I can have her, and you can, and _she_ can have _us._ Together or separately if you'd prefer, but I'm done playing by their rules."

"Together," Mal croaks, a little startled to find that's what he wants.

But Wash laughs. "I kind of figured — the way you look at Simon ..."

"Hey!"

* * *

That night Zoe's breasts are soft under his halting touch as he pulls her vest away. Her mouth tastes sweet. Wash is behind him, pulling down the straps of his suspenders and when Wash's broad hands skim his hips it don't feel strange at all. 

In the morning, when Mal talks to Kaylee about the possibility of taking out the wall between Mal's bunk and theirs, no one says anything, not even Jayne.

Finis


End file.
